Yet the plan by Monterey County's native tribe has been marred by accusations of casino schemes, lack of federal recognition of the tribe and, recently, a proposal to build an 80-room hotel.

Today, the chance of anything getting built on the plot near the planned East Garrison community is a long shot, said Rudy Rosales, a tribal member of the Esselen Nation.

"Everybody I know that is an official is dead set against us getting that land," Rosales said.

Although an initial plan from the Department of the Interior to give the Esselens the territory fell through, much of the tribe — at least until recently — believed Monterey County had promised them the land.

Years of failed starts for the transfer came to a head at a sparsely attended Monterey County Supervisors subcommittee meeting on Feb. 25.

"There's a lot of things that smell like it might be some sort of gaming facility," Supervisor Dave Potter said last week. "This is Fort Ord. It's not Las Vegas."

Ramirez's presentation took another hit when Rosales publicly claimed, among other things, the tribe had not been shown the plans she presented.

The tribal chairwoman said Tuesday that Rosales "speaks without knowing" and all nine members of the tribal council voted for what was presented.

She said the tribe had come up with a new, bigger plan to pay builders with hotel profits.

"We want to be able to be self-sufficient," she said. "That's how we feel we can repay them."

The plan was created at no charge by EcoLogic Design Lab, an architectural design and research firm based in Sand City and Monterey.

Possession of land

Carl Holm, deputy director of the county's resource management agency, said Tuesday the Esselens have no agreement with the county for land. If someone else wanted to buy the tribe's proposed property, there would be nothing they could do to stop it.

Ramirez admitted Tuesday to believing at one point the land was the tribe's and they would get it for free.

A 1998 letter from the Department of the Interior shows the National Park Service approved a 10-acre parcel on Fort Ord for the Esselen and Hoopa tribes.

When that agreement did not work out, the letter said, Monterey County "expressed a willingness" to give the land to the Esselens.

It is unclear what happened next. Ramirez said it is often hard to get documents from previous councils to figure out exactly what was agreed on.

The 2012 Fort Ord Reuse Plan Reassessment says the tribe "states that it had public benefit conveyance" for the land but it was not mentioned in the original base reuse plan, the county's Fort Ord Master Plan, the East Garrison Specific Plan or memorandum of understanding for a land swap.

Still, Rosales says he won't give up on the original project.

Last week, he took a Herald reporter and photographer through undeveloped areas of Fort Ord to the land he would like for the tribe.

As he walked on a dusty path through scrub oak trees, Rosales spoke poetically about schoolchildren coming to an interpretive center to learn about Esselens and native ceremonies performed on the land.

"This is my dream," he said.

Casino concerns

The Esselen council voted in February to not build a casino on the Fort Ord land, Ramirez said.

The tribe has long maintained it would not build a casino, which could only happen if it became federally recognized, but that has not stopped officials from being cautious.

Though there are restrictions on gambling on the former Army base, if the Esselens got recognized, their sovereign nation status would supercede local or state laws.

"There is a concern that once they assert they have a right to some land there," Potter said, "what looks like a cultural center becomes a casino."

The tribe, which refers to itself as the Esselen Nation, has been around for some time but has been listed by different names.

The tribe was called Mission Carmel on the Approved Roll of California Indians in 1951 and the Monterey Band by a federal Special Indian Census in 1905. It continued to show up in records under that name in federal and state documents until 1923.

The FORA reassessment plan says Fort Ord was inhabited by the Costanoan Rumsen Carmel Tribe "dating back at least as far as 5000 BC."

Several calls to the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs were not returned, but Ramirez said they last spoke with the agency in 2004 when they were told to provide more information about their tribal history.

She said the tribe is too poor to fight the federal government on its history. She said they often can't afford to pay fees to hold ceremonies on sacred ground or have gatherings for their more than 500 members.